- Battle of St. Louis
The Battle of St. Louis (Spanish "San Luis") was an unsuccessful British-led attack on St. Louis (a French settlement that had been ceded to
Spain ) onMay 26 ,1780 , during theAmerican Revolutionary War .Background
The attack was motivated both by Spain's entry into the war in
1779 and by American activity in theNorthwest Territory that same year. American expeditionsGeorge Rogers Clark had boldly challenged British domination of the region, and when the Spaniards under Louisiana GovernorBernardo de Gálvez began driving the British from the mouth of theMississippi and cutting communications with the Gulf colonies, British rule was directly threatened.The British
punitive expedition was organized atFort Michilimackinac near the Canadian frontier. Gathered there for the purpose was a large body of their native allies, largelySioux and Winnebago warriors. This force was led by a nucleus of British officers and regular infantry and supplemented with Canadianmilitia .Awaiting them at St. Louis were 21 men of the "Fijo de Luisiana" ("Louisiana Regulars") colonial regiment and whatever militia could be mustered from the townspeople. But the small town, at the insistence of Captain
Fernando De Leyba , Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, had been well-fortified months before by a ring of trenches and a stone tower bearing the name "Fort San Carlos".Battle
The British arrived on
May 26 and savagely handled a group of farmers and slaves on the outskirts of town before rushing into the deadly volleys from the entrenched defenders. The militia and natives, unused to attacking fortifications, faltered. (Classic native andFrench Canadian warfare, known in French as "la petite guerre ", involved lightning raids against lightly or undefended targets). De Leyba's cannon on Fort San Carlos opened fire, driving the invaders off.Aftermath
The village of 900 lost 92 dead and captured, virtually all civilians. The British met a similar defeat at
Cahokia , and a year later the Spaniards from St. Louis seized Fort St. Joseph. With its position rendered untenable by theSiege of Yorktown , Britain entered peace negotiations in1782 .References
*Rickey, Don, Jr. "The British-Indian Attack on St. Louis, May 26, 1780" in David Curtis Skaggs, ed., "The Old Northwest in the American Revolution: An Anthology". Madison, Wisconsin: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1977. ISBN 0-87020-164-6. Originally published in the "Missouri Historical Review" 55, October 1960.
External links
* [http://www.nps.gov/jeff/LewisClark2/Circa1804/StLouis/BlockInfo/Block100FortSanCarlosBattle1780.htm Fort San Carlos and the Battle of 1780]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.